An Era Where a Law License No Longer Ensures Survival, Reducing Passers Remains a Short-Term Remedy

Annual Output of 1,700 Lawyers Fuels ‘Optimal Scale’ Debate
Bar Association: “Too Many Lawyers, Fees Declining with AI Adoption”
Law School Deans: “Raise Pass Rate to 80% of Examinees”

The accumulated oversupply of lawyers is triggering a broad-based decline in prices across the legal market while intensifying competition for cases, heightening industry-wide tensions. At the same time, the spread of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and growing jurisdictional conflicts with adjacent professions are placing simultaneous pressure on both the revenue structure and the scope of legal services. The era in which obtaining a law license ensured stable entry is rapidly drawing to a close.

Bar Association: “5,000 Excess Lawyers, Market Saturation”

On the 6th, the Korean Bar Association (KBA) issued a statement urging an immediate reduction in the number of successful candidates in the bar exam. The KBA stated, “The legal market has moved beyond a simple downturn and entered a phase of systemic collapse, with oversupply leading to declining service quality and eroding public trust in the judiciary,” adding, “We strongly call on the Ministry of Justice to reverse the existing output scale in announcing the 15th bar exam results and decisively implement a meaningful reduction plan.” According to the KBA, the average number of cases handled per lawyer per month has fallen from 6.97 in 2008 to less than one currently, while median annual income has dropped to approximately $22,000, ranking at the bottom among professional occupations. In a study released on the 2nd, the Seoul Bar Association (SBA) also estimated that the current number of lawyers exceeds the appropriate level by more than 5,000.

The KBA argued, “Continuing excessive output in a context where legal demand is shrinking due to population decline and the expansion of AI amounts to policy neglect that pushes the legal ecosystem toward irreversible damage,” and called on the government to △limit this year’s bar exam passers to fewer than 1,500 △gradually reduce annual passers to below 1,000 △pre-announce selection quotas. It also emphasized the need for institutional reform, criticizing the current practice of determining the number of successful candidates on the day of announcement as lacking transparency. KBA President Kim Jung-wook stated, “Compared with Japan, Korea’s per capita output of new lawyers is four to six times higher,” adding, “Such overcrowding directly leads to cutthroat competition and a deterioration in legal service quality.” SBA President Cho Soon-yeol also criticized, “The number of new lawyers, which was promised at 1,500, has risen to 1,750, and the vacancy-filling system maintained for 15 years is a financial workaround for universities,” calling for its immediate abolition.

Earlier the same day, the KBA gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice at the Government Complex in Gwacheon to hold a rally condemning the oversupply of lawyers. The KBA and SBA argued that the government’s failure to follow through on its promise to consolidate adjacent legal professions at the time of introducing law schools had led to the current oversupply. In fact, the number of lawyers in Korea has more than tripled since 2009, prior to the introduction of the law school system, surpassing 30,000. According to data released by the Ministry of Justice late last month, there are 36,319 registered lawyers, of whom 27,682 are registered in Seoul alone, accounting for nearly 75% of the total.

A practicing lawyer who passed the former judicial exam commented, “In the past, the minimum fee for taking a case was around $3,700 per month, but now, due to intense competition, some lawyers are quoting around $2,200. Considering the costs of court appearances, document preparation, and case handling time, there were instances where it was not feasible to provide proper service,” adding, “Low price does not guarantee quality, yet most clients, who may need a lawyer only once in their lifetime, lack an understanding of proper service and would likely choose the $2,200 option.”

Law Schools: “Expanding Legal Market, Raise Pass Rate to 80%”

In contrast, law schools responsible for training future legal professionals hold a sharply opposing view. They argue that simple comparisons ignoring differences in legal systems and market size across countries are misguided, and instead call for a significant increase in lawyer output, raising the pass rate to around 80% of examinees. In a joint statement issued on the 6th, deans of all 25 law schools nationwide stated, “The current bar exam has effectively become a selection test that eliminates nearly half of examinees, with the pass rate fixed in the low 50% range.” They emphasized that Korea’s legal market has expanded rapidly beyond litigation into non-litigation sectors such as information technology (IT) and healthcare, growing from approximately $2.8 billion in 2013 to about $7.0 billion in 2024.

The deans added, “The current pass rate in the 50% range entrenches a distorted structure that forces capable individuals into repeated retakes and dependence on private education,” and argued, “Even if we aim to cultivate creativity and practical skills required in the AI era, it is nearly impossible under the continued abnormality of the system.” They called for concrete implementation measures to transform the bar exam into a qualification-based system, including raising the pass rate to 80% of examinees, gradually increasing it in stages, and normalizing the system so that law schools can fulfill their original educational mission of training diverse, practice-oriented legal professionals rather than focusing on exam preparation.

They further emphasized, “The determination of bar exam passers should be based not on the expected income of existing lawyers but on ensuring access to justice for all,” adding, “Korea currently has 7.2 lawyers per 10,000 people, which is only 18–35% of the levels seen in major advanced economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom.” They argued that sufficient new legal professionals are still necessary to ensure access to justice for local communities and marginalized groups. The deans also stated, “Even a gradual increase of 5 percentage points annually in the pass rate, resulting in an additional 100–200 successful candidates per year, would quickly alleviate the accumulated backlog of unsuccessful examinees,” urging the Ministry of Justice to establish a detailed plan for phased pass rate increases.

Encroachment by AI and Adjacent Professions, Lawyers Losing Ground

Since the abolition of the judicial exam and the unification of legal training and qualification under the law school system, the bar exam pass rate and number of successful candidates have been contentious issues from the outset. At its inception, a benchmark of “at least 1,500 successful candidates, equivalent to 75% of the law school admission quota (2,000 students)” was applied. However, as the number of repeat examinees accumulated over successive exam cycles, the pass rate declined. At the same time, the “five attempts within five years” rule created a structure in which unsuccessful candidates remained in the system, bringing the issue of so-called “bar exam drifters” to the forefront.

Meanwhile, practitioners have consistently pointed to intensifying competition for cases resulting from the rapid increase in lawyer numbers. In reality, the expansion of legal demand has remained limited relative to the pace of supply growth, deepening the imbalance. The fundamental economic principle of supply and demand has operated in the legal market without exception. The more than 30% decline in legal fees over the past five years demonstrates that oversupply has directly pressured market pricing.

The longstanding practice of high upfront retainers has disappeared, replaced by platform-based price comparisons and low-cost competition as the new market standard. These external shifts are now threatening the very scope of legal work. In particular, the emergence of generative AI has enabled tasks once performed by lawyers for thousands of dollars—such as basic legal consultation, case law research, and document drafting—to be completed in seconds. This directly impacts the practical work traditionally handled by junior associate lawyers, shrinking the foundation for new entrants into the profession.

At the same time, ongoing jurisdictional conflicts with adjacent professions such as judicial scriveners, tax accountants, and labor attorneys have further intensified competition. These professions are expanding their access to areas traditionally reserved for lawyers, such as advisory rights and litigation representation, based on their specialized expertise. Government institutions are also strengthening their internal legal capabilities, narrowing the role of private lawyers. As a result, lawyers face a dual pressure structure—exposure to price competition internally and simultaneous pressure from technology and other professions externally.

However, economic experts argue that the current pain experienced by the legal profession reflects an inevitable transition in which the definition of a profession is shifting from “authority” to “service.” In this context, measures proposed by the KBA, such as reducing law school quotas and abolishing the vacancy-filling system, may serve as short-term remedies for market normalization. Yet, a growing consensus suggests that fundamental solutions require parallel efforts to enhance the qualitative capabilities of lawyers and diversify their fields of practice. Rather than focusing solely on reducing numbers, there is a need to cultivate advanced strategic legal services that cannot be replaced by AI and to innovate educational systems that enable expansion into global markets and emerging industries.